tras sounded in the ears of this people? To thy name be all the praise. O for a trumpet voice, on all the world to call. O that I could point this whole assembly to the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. Those arms of love that compass me, would compass all mankind. May the Son make us free that we may be free indeed! AMEN.

CHRISTIANITY REASONABLE IN ITS DOCTRINES AND

DEMANDS.

BY REV. JOHN C. GRANBERY, A. M.,

OF THE VIRGINIA CONFERENCE.

"Then he which had received the one talent came, and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine."-Mat. xxv, 24, 25.

I do not purpose to comment on the crime and punishment of the servant who buried his talent. There was little committed to his trust a single talent; he is charged not with throwing it away or spending it sinfully, but merely with failure to improve and increase it: Nevertheless, he is condemned as wicked and slothful; the one talent is taken away, and he is cast into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Fearful warning to every unprofitable servant! Friend, have you received the grace of God in vain, or are you growing therein? Are you doing anything with your talents, five, two, one; or lie they idle? God grant that you may be a good and faithful servant-commended and rewarded as such in the day of reckoning!

But I will not now pursue that line of thought. I quote the servant's vindication of his own conduct as substantially agreeing with the excuse you often make for the neglect of duty, viz: the severity and even impracticability of the Divine exactions. You recoil, I grant, from the daring profanity of calling God a hard Master; when tried by His word and found wanting, you may not be so bold and so blasphemous as to assert your own innocence, and impeach Him of injustice in His requirements; you may refuse to utter such words, or

entertain such reflections in their naked impiety: and yet, in the secret chambers of the heart, unsearched save by His all-piercing and allcomprehensive gaze, lurks there not the thought, unexpressed, scarce acknowledged to yourself, that His demands are austere and unreasonable? Is not that the true rendering of many disguised arguments with which you repel the personal appeals of the preacher or other christian friend? Whether you sneer at the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the Church in general; or select some individual member for your censure; or complain that there are so many mysteries in the Bible, deep, dark, incomprehensible, so that you know not what to believe or what to do; or rail at the clashing creeds and fierce contests of christian sects among whom you cannot tell where you shall find the safest guide, and whose endless diversities leave little chance for falling on the one true faith-whatever special form your reasoning may assume, yet, inasmuch as you are held to responsibility by God and not by man; inasmuch as no conduet of your fellows, who are equally with yourself is subjects, can release you from obligation to His service or screen you from His judgment, is not the simple amount of all these pleas an attempt to clear yourself by charging God? Do you not virtually affirm that you are required to pursue a path which you are unable to discover, and to perform duties which exceed your utmost strength; that it will not be right in your Judge to punish you for the lack of a religion you can neither understand nor practice?

Suppose I were to admit your assumption thus far, that the dread Being with whom we have to deal does exact a difficult service at our hands, and seems, both in the measure of His requirements and in the terror of His retributive justice, to have little respect to human infirmities and the disadvantages of our condition, may I not turn your argument against yourself? May I not say, as the Lord said to Ilis servant, "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant?" Let all you say be true about the hard commands and the harsh judgments of God, yet as you are in His power, impotent to break His grasp or bear His wrath, the very austerity of His character, the very rigor of His law, should make you the more careful and diligent and untiring in doing the work assigned you; for if you be idle and negligent, if you make no effort to do what you can for Him, how unfit you are to be measured by so strict a rule, and how

heavy must be the penalty affixed by so stern a Judge? O, think what it is to be weighed in a balance so exact! O, tremble before God who holds a rod of iron! You sometimes seek to content and comfort yourself in a course of sin and neglect of religion, by the idea that large allowance will be made for the frailty of your nature and the violence of temptation, by Him who remembereth our frame, who knoweth that we are dust, whose mercies endure forever; but I warn you against lowering that high standard of holiness which His law contains, and offending that stainless purity which cannot look upon sin, and insulting that inexorable justice which will by no means clear the guilty, and despising that rich goodness which seeks to bring you to repentance, but failing there will surely bring you to eternal remorse. The blazing glory of infinite holiness is to the sinner a consuming, quenchless fire: the majestic arm of His avenging justice wields a whetted sword that spares not a victim and misses not an aim. If God shall prove to you a hard Master, O sinner, what must be your fate!

But I would address myself at present to a more pleasing and not less profitable task: I would refute your assumption so far as it charges God with undue severity, and vindicate the claims of the gospel as not only allowed, but demanded, by wisdom, righteousness,

and love.

One might, at first glance, question whether it is consistent with a becoming modesty and reverence in God's servant to examine the objections of the caviller against the Divine government, and enter upon an argument in vindication of his ways at the bar of human judgment. The august name of the Infinite is ever on the lip of fools to point a jest or strengthen an imprecation; but far be it from his servant to speak or think it without deep abasement and solemn awe. When we would approach, though to adore, a voice speaks forth from the flaming glory, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." We enter the holiest with appeasing blood, and the shekinal splendor, though resting on the mercy-seat, dazzles and overpowers us; in silence and in fear we fall and worship. The angels before His throne cover their faces with their wings, as they cry, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts:" reverently restraining within due bounds their desire to look into the mysteries of the gospel, that they may understand the strange sufferings of Christ and

the glory which should follow, they wait their orders, and fly forth as servants to herald salvation and minister to its heirs, though the wondrous plan has not been unrolled to their vision or fathomed by their reason. How shall we, impressed with the sublime majesty and effulgent holiness of the Most High, discuss with foolish, sinful men the wisdom of His law and the equity of His judgments? Yet we are warranted in so doing by inspired examples. Does not God expostulate with men on their folly, refute their objections to His acts, and appeal to their own reason against themselves and in His favor? "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah," we hear Him say, "judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" "Yet saith the house of

Israel, The way of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?" Astounding and affecting spectacle! We see the God of grandeur and of glory, dwelling in the unapproachable splendor of His own uncreated and unbounded perfection, filling with His presence all space and all duration; the faint straggling of whose brightness, through the manyfolded veil of clouds which surround Him, is the illumination of heaven, so intense as scarce to be endured by the strength of angelic vision; whose homage and praise, when not awe-struck dumbness as of death, is the thunder-shout of all their hosts, and song deep as the ocean swell; the glance of whose eye is the flash of the lightning, and the step of His foot the tread of the tornado, the breath of Ilis mouth volcanic fire, and the shake of His hand the rocking earthquake; at whose voice of grace in the beginning the universe sprang into being and beauty, at whose voice of terror in the end, it shall dissolve into its primitive abyss of nothing-we see this God stretching forth His hands with crying all day long to a rebellious people; we see Him in Christ, shedding tears for Jerusalem and blood for the world; we see him in his Spirit, striving to win man from ruin; we see him in his servants, warning sinners, pleading with them, stooping to controvert their insulting reasonings; we hear of the sounding of his bowels and of his mercies; we hear him say, " Ilow shall I give thee up? my heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together;" and again, "Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do remember him still there

fore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." And this God of tender mercy and long suffering you call a hard Master! Be sure that his condescending grace, which is so full of forbearance, unless it shall happily win you to obedience, will break your heart, now hardened against gratitude, with aggravated anguish, and your doom shall be the more terrible because the sentence of the Judge must be sanctioned by the conscience of the criminal. Laying aside, therefore, in accommodation to your folly, that unquestioning loyalty and speechless homage which I would have as the unbroken habit of my own mind, I meet your impious assertions, and maintain that the claims of God in their height and breadth are both right and reasonable.

I. God does not require of you faith, without ample evidence and light.

Suppose that he refuses to
Suppose he blinds his mind,

It is not a matter of slight moment what your creed may be. It is of binding obligation and essential importance that you learn and believe the truth as it is in Jesus. "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." By faith in the true gospel we must be saved; without it we are lost. It is idle to affirm that a man should not be held responsible for his belief. seek light, is he not criminal therein? perverts his moral judgment by a long course of sin, or by direct efforts to reason himself into opinions which license and stimulate his lusts, until he loses all perception of the excellence of virtue, and approves the most horrid crimes-is not this sufficient evidence to convict him of guilt and deep depravity, though not an act of wickedness, in accordance with his black creed, be charged against him? Gifted as you are with intelligence and freedom, the necessary conditions of responsibility and moral character, you cannot demand that truth should burst upon your view in full-orbed splendor and irresistible conviction, like the the morning sun upon our globe, without any effort of your own to discover or capacity to dispute it. It is enough, that to the honest, earnest, patient searcher, there should be revealed evidence to satisfy his judgment and light to instruct his reason. "If I had not done among them," said Jesus of the Jews, "the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen, and hated both me and my Father." Whenever there has been made an authoritative annunciation of